About Me

Sunday, 2 June 2013

I wandered about Calouste Gulbenkian Gardens ... as I used to ... when I was a young mother ... its beauty has always "soothed" my pain ... my worries ... similarly to the Art exhibitions that have had the same effect throughout the years and still do.

There is something rather artistic about the way the garden has fitted in the city and its statues placed in fairly reclusive areas ... surrounded by shrubbery or overlooking small ponds where wild ducks and migratory fowl always seem to come to year after year ...

I initially walked into the main lounge but opted by the Modern part of the Museum where there were temporary exhibitions I was interested in, but not without having photographed the1919 limestone statue - "Spring, homage to Jean Goujon by Alfred-Auguste Janniot and the 1895 bronze statue by Rodin portraying Jean D'Aire.

They stood there as if inviting us in with both their refreshing and sullen-like air ...

The first exhibition I had access to - "Galapagos" is said to have resulted from a five-year long programme of artistic residences in the Galapagos islands and incorporates a wide variety of works by twelve artists on different issues ranging from nature to politics.

Alexis Deacon, a well known British illustrator and author of books for children developed an imagined story-made version of Galapagos told through the character of a cabin-boy following the fortunes of a crew of shipwrecked sailors.

Paulo Catrica, a Portuguese photographer who spent two weeks on the Galapagos islands recorded in a series of photographs what he has described as the "social landscape" of the islands.

I then watched a film "Cock fight" (left) by Turner prize winning artist Jeremy Delher, known for engaging in the cultural and political life of the places he visits, followed by a TV documentary, "Human report" (right) by Marcus Coates in which he used the blue-footed booby, an iconic bird of the Galapagos islands to report on the human behaviour in a clear reversed type of approach to the theme in question.

It was undoubtedly a very different approach to Galapagos islands, at least different from what I had expected it to be, but worth being visited.